


The Knotting Shop

by crossingwinter



Series: The Knotting Shop [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, I DON’T EVEN BEGIN TO APOLOGIZE FOR ALL THE KNITTING SEX JOKES IN THIS FIC, is that a size 15 needle in his pocket or is Ben just happy to see her?, me @ reylo: tries to fade to black over an emotional conversation to get to the fuckening, reylo @ me: ummmmmm ooc., the knitting abo fic no one needed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-14 03:56:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15380136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: Ben realizes upon entering the shop that he had gotten thecompletewrong impression from the name of it.What the fuck sort of shop calls itself The Knotting Shop if it’s not about, well, knotting?The answer, apparently, is a knitter with a sense of humor.  An Omega, by the scent that seems to have landed in every colorful ball of yarn in the shop and which hits him right in the groin.





	1. Cast On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jeeno2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeeno2/gifts), [hipgrab (merrymegtargaryen)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merrymegtargaryen/gifts).



> Thanks to Jeeno’s autocorrect for spawning this ridiculous idea of a premise tbqh. 
> 
> I’m doing that thing where I give them species markers again.

Ben realizes upon entering the shop that he had gotten the  _ complete _ wrong impression from the name of it.

What the fuck sort of shop calls itself The Knotting Shop if it’s not about, well, knotting?

The answer, apparently, is a knitter with a sense of humor.  An Omega, by the scent that seems to have landed in every colorful ball of yarn in the shop and which hits him right in the groin.

“Hi, can I help you?”

Ben’s eyes zoom in on the man behind the counter.  He’s black, and an Alpha, thank god. Ben has never been as excited to smell an Alpha in his life, but given just how the rest of the shop smells, he latches onto the Alpha’s scent like a drowning man lurching towards a life preserver.

“Hi,” he says.  He tries not to inhale too deeply.  The Alpha gives him a commiserating look.

“Yeah, it can be overwhelming,” he says and Ben just about dies from embarrassment.  But he registers one very important fact as he leans forward, gripping the counter behind which the other Alpha is standing: the Omega’s scent is unmated.

“How do you handle it?” he asks.

“Blockers like it’s nobody’s business,” the man replies.  “Being mated also helps—except when she’s about to go into heat.”  

Ben nods.  He can’t help it.  He’s looking around the shop for a sign of her.  She smells like heaven and this little shop seems like the coziest corner for a happy Omega.  The yarn has absorbed the scent of her happiness, the safety she feels in this place, has locked it into place.  And god it’s intoxicating.

“Do you need a moment?” the Alpha asks.

“I don’t know if a moment’s going to help,” Ben replies weakly.  

“What are you looking for then?  We can get you out as fast as possible.”

Ben can’t even remember.  He’d been curious about what The Knotting Shop was.  He hadn’t actually been planning to buy anything, and he certainly hadn’t been planning on drowning in the scent of an unmated Omega who’s not even there.

“I can’t even,” he starts to say except the door opens behind him and he hears a tinkling bell and everything inside him stops.  It just stops.

“Hello.”  He can’t even turn around.  Her voice is like music, and he’s breathing hard.  He hears her stop short, watches as the Alpha behind the counter gives her a look that Ben’s quite sure is a mind meld—the sort that only exists between best friends—and then she begins to make her way through the shop towards a room in the back.  Ben watches her out of the corner of his eye, sees that she’s shorter than him, though still tall, that she’s slim, that she’s got dark hair, and that she closes the door behind her to cut off her scent. 

His knuckles are white he’s gripping the counter so hard.

And his dick is horrifically hard.

“Listen,” the other Alpha says, not unkindly. “Come back on blockers and we’ll help you out.  I don’t think this is the right time.”

“Yeah,” Ben agrees. “I need a minute now though.”

The Alpha lets out a huff of amusement that rubs Ben the wrong way.  He knows how ridiculous he is. But he could use a little compassion right now.  It’s easy enough for this Alpha who clearly knows how to handle drowning in this scent, who gets to see her every day, talk to her like a friend.  Ben, meanwhile, is locked in a battle with the primal part of his brain that wants to tear down the aisle of the shop, dick in the lead, and rip open that door and just...see what her face looks like.  Say hi. Fuck her against a wall. He doesn’t know.

Time passes and he calms down, focusing on the scent of the Alpha.

“Thanks,” Ben mumbles as he straightens.

“Any time,” the Alpha replies, clearly still amused.  

Ben’s just about out the door when the Alpha calls to him, “We have knitting circle here every Tuesday night.  She teaches newbies. If you’re interested.”

Ben gulps and looks around the shop again.  The balls of yarn are very colorful, and he’s always liked woolen things.  “Thanks,” he says again. Then, “I’m Ben.”

“Finn,” the guy says.  “And she’s Rey.”

 

_ \-  _

 

Finn finds Rey in the back of the shop, breathing heavily.

“Oh not you too,” he laughs.

“Shut up,” Rey growls.  “I’m close to heat.” She’s less than a month away at this point and everything is just more sensitive when she’s less than a month away.  Her nipples are so hard they could probably cut glass right now.

“I know,” Finn says, patting her on the shoulder.  “I told him about Tuesday night knitting circles. Something tells me he’ll be back.  You can thank me later.”

“I don’t know whether to thank you or hit you,” she grumbles.  He chuckles and pats her shoulder.

“Was he really that strong?  I mean I got his ‘holy shit Omega Must Impress’ pheromones but—”

“Yeah.  His were strong,” Rey says.  Like chocolate and rainy days and rubbing alpaca yarn against your face.  She’s practically drooling at the memory of it, and her pre-heat imagination takes over and imagines licking his neck, letting him rub his face all over her while she purrs at him.  

That makes her frown.

“Did you catch his marker?” she asks, trying to sound casual.

Finn’s nose is sharper than hers—probably because he’s got the dog marker.  He’s red-green color blind, too, which is common for dog-marked Alphas and Omegas, and which makes it sometimes hard for him to help out with the customers who want him to compare two different colorways.  But Rey’s a cat—a domestic short hair, her endocrinologist had told her after she’d gone in for her first blood work, the most common of cats. A house cat, if you will. A house cat who gets distracted by yarn of all sort, especially when it’s tangled because it’s just  _ so fun _ to untangle.  Finn likes to make fun of her for that.  

Finn’s grin widens as he looks at her.  “Yeah. He was definitely a cat too. That’s probably why you smell so horny right now.”

“Go  _ away _ ,” she growls at him and he laughs.  “You were easily this horny when you got Rose’s scent.”  Rose is a mountain goat and had had good suppressants and it had taken Finn a little while to catch her scent, but oh boy once he’d had it… Rey had had to buy earplugs.  She wasn’t going to tell Finn to keep it down, but they’d been  _ loud _ .  

Loud, and Rey had tried not to take it personally that she was still alone.

She had fought hard for her little home, scraping everything she could together with her bare hands.  She owned her shop, she had friends, she had enough money to scrape by. Not bad for a little girl with no parents.  She didn’t need to feel miserable about not having someone to snuggle when she got lonely. She didn’t need anyone to take care of her.  She’d proven time and again that she could take care of herself.  And she certainly wasn’t going to begrudge Finn having found someone who loved him.

“Also,” Finn says, sounding positively gleeful as he makes his way back towards the door to give Rey space while she gets herself settled again, “His name’s Ben.”

 

-

 

Ben’s on the strongest blockers he can find when he goes back to The Knotting Shop on Tuesday night.  Their website had said that knitting classes began at six, and that there was a BYO policy for yarn and needles, but that if you didn’t have them, you were welcome to buy some from the shop.  (He had stared at the page for too long. There’d been a picture of Rey—it had to be Rey, who else could it be, sitting next to Finn and smiling out at the internet—on the page, and the second he saw it, the memory of her scent flooded his mind again.)

He’s never smelled an Omega that strongly in his life.  Not in terms of how overpowering it is or in terms of how  _ sweet _ it is in his nose, like fireside evenings and mulled cider and the feeling of being scratched behind his ears.  It’s making him twitchy. 

He memorizes the lines of her face, the color of her eyes, and takes a deep breath.  Yeah, he’d made a fool of himself the first time he’d encountered her. But he can be better this time.  He can handle it better. And if he’s on blockers, he’ll know it’s just a dumb biological reaction and not…

He gulps.

He straightens his shoulders.  

He goes into The Knotting Shop.

And immediately notices is that he is definitely the only man in the room.  There are six of them in the shop. One of them is hugely pregnant, her needles clicking away contentedly as she chats with two other knitters.  One has a look of intense concentration on her face as she stares at the yarn she’s trying to wrestle into a….misshapen lump of a project.

“And what’s next?” Rey asks gently and Ben’s eyes snap to her.  That she hadn’t been the first person he’d noticed is a good sign.  It means the blockers are working. He can’t smell anything at all. 

“I…” the knitter says. 

“You’ve got this,” Rey encourages.  The novice knitter moves the yarn and Rey grins.  “Yes, that’s right! And now?”

“Off to the other needle.”

“Nailed it.”

Only then does she look up and lock eyes with Ben and Ben notices just how stiffly she’s sitting, just how wide her pupils are.   _ She smells me.   _

“Hi,” she says, and she pulls her lips between her teeth, trying to wet them.  “Welcome.”

“Thanks,” he says.  “I…” All of them are staring at him.  Every single one of them. He feels intensely as though he’s invaded some private space, and he should probably go.  He should go right? 

“Don’t have needles?” Rey cuts in.  “Or yarn?”

“No.  No yarn,” he says.  

“I’ll help you get set up,” she says and gets to her feet.  “Have you knit before?” she asks him quietly as she leads him through the rows of yarn, all beautiful and soft and colorful.

Ben shakes his head.  “No I’m—”  _ here because of you.   _ “New to it.”

“Ooh exciting!” she looks very pleased.  “Knitting’s great.”

“Yeah,” Ben says.  “I’ve always liked sweaters and hats and stuff.”  He sounds like an idiot. He sounds like a colossal idiot.  

“They’re always better when they’re handmade,” Rey says and something about the way she says  _ handmade _ makes his breath catch.  He looks down at his hands.  So does Rey. Hers are delicate—smaller than his, with thin fingers.  His are huge and his fingers are blunt and she’s staring at his hands too.  He looks back at her, and she jerks her eyes back up to his. 

There are flecks of green in the brown of her eyes.  Green and gold. 

“Here,” she says and she shoves some yarn into his hands.  It’s bulky and red and doesn’t quite distract him from the hoarse quality to her voice.  “Start with this. It’s easier to see than with a darker yarn.” She reaches up and plucks some needles from a jar on top of the shelf and presses them into his hand.  

“Cool,” he says.

“Right.”

She leads him back to the circle of knitters.  One of the other women has taken over teaching the novice and gives Rey a significant glance that Ben has no idea how to unpack.

“Ok,” Rey says.  “What do you know about knitting?”

“Nothing,” Ben replies.  He decides it’s better to be honest.  

“So the first thing we do is casting on.  I think…” she pauses. “I think I’m just going to cast on for you.  Then I’ll teach you knitting.”

He watches as she loops the yarn around her fingers and then, faster than anyone has the right to, she’s twisting and turning and looping the yarn until there are a good twenty or thirty stitches on the needle for him, neat and even and red.  She looks back at him when she’s done. “The principle of knitting is that you’re just connecting a bunch of loops to one another over and over again. There are two basic motions and then some variations on those, but if you know the knit stitch, you can do pretty much anything you want.”  She sticks the needle into one of the stitches, and then does something Ben can’t even begin to understand with her fingers and the other needle and the stitch is now on the other needle. “Again, a little more slowly,” she says, and she repeats the motion. She does it a third time. And a fourth time.  

“So you’re basically using the other needle to grab the yarn and pull it through?” he asks.

“Exactly!” Rey sounds delighted and it shouldn’t affect him the way that it does.  It really shouldn’t. It’s  _ knitting,  _ not, as the sign in the window had tricked him, knotting.  But the praise… does something to his head that’s got nothing to do with his stuffed up nose.  “Ready to try?”

Ben is definitely not ready to try, but she’s already unwrapping the yarn from her hand.  “I’m going to teach you the harder way to learn,” she says. “But when you have a good grip on it,” he manages not to let on the way his stomach squirms at the thought of what  _ else _ she might someday have a good grip on, “you’ll be a much faster knitter.  First thing you do is wrap the yarn around your left hand.”

She shows him as best she can, hooking her pinky and then wrapping the yarn over his fingers.  She makes it look easy; he is terrible at it. He’s never thought of having fingers that are particularly useless.  He played the clarinet growing up, and he’s a fast typer. But his fingers are fucking useless at knitting and he hasn’t even tried doing anything with the stitches yet.  But Rey is a patient teacher. She corrects his grip on the needles, and doesn’t want to kick him out of her store when he tries and fails about nineteen different times to get one stitch done.

It feels like the biggest victory on the planet when he gets the stitch onto the needle in his right hand and Rey looks immensely proud of him when he looks up at her.  “Good job! You got it!” His breath catches in his throat. “Now do it again.”

He whimpers and Rey laughs.  “You can do it. I believe in you.”

He’s on the strongest blockers he’s ever been on in his goddamn life but that doesn’t stop his Alpha brain going  _ impress your Omega.  Keep knitting. _

_ She’s not even my Omega,  _ he protests internally.

_ Keep knitting,  _ the Alpha brain retorts huffily.  So turns his attention back to the needles in his hand and tries again.

 

-

 

Ben’s very focused on his knitting, which is a relief.  She can only guess he’s on blockers, based on the difference coming into this shop today versus the first time she’d seen him.

She hadn’t actually expected him to show.  It wouldn’t be the first time that an Alpha had come into her shop, curious about the name, and then left, overwhelmed by the scent.  Usually the Alphas try and impress her, but don’t actually get very far, and certainly don’t show up to knitting lessons. Knitting isn’t a particularly  _ alpha _ activity, after all.

But there’s Ben, staring at his needles, his brow furrowed as he tries to master continental style knitting with his huge hands.  She’d given him bulky yarn and large needles and does not regret the choice. He’d have been fucked with anything smaller. 

He smells—well, he smells just as good as he had the other day.  And she’s  _ glad _ that he’s on blockers today because it means he can’t smell the hideously embarrassing way that her body is reacting to his scent, compounded by the sight of him wrestling with a ball of yarn and needles for the first time in his life.

Jess smirks at her behind Ben’s back.  Jess is not on blockers or suppressants of any sort and her pregnant nose has been very sensitive the past few months (she’d complained about it during one of their previous Stitch and Bitch sessions) and she can smell  _ exactly _ what’s going on.  Luckily, she has more subtlety about it than Finn had had the other day.  Though to Finn’s credit, they had been in private when he’d mocked the crap out of her.

Ben makes it all the way to the end of a row in about forty minutes, which is good time for a new knitter, and then Rey shows him how to just turn the needle around and start the next row.  “First stitches are hard,” she tells him. “And if it looks weird, try moving your yarn around a bit until it looks normal.” She takes the opportunity to examine his row. He’s added probably about six stitches, which is par for the course, and his stitches are tight, probably because of nerves.  “Try and keep this row a little looser,” she tells him. “It’ll make your life easier later.”

“If they’re looser they’ll fall off the needle,” he protests.  

“Yeah, but it’ll make it harder to get your needle in if your stitch is too tight.”  

“A tight fit is bad.”  He sounds like he’s trying to memorize the advice, and seems wholly oblivious of the mental image that his words put in Rey’s head, of biting his collar bone because  _ he _ is a tight fit.  

“In knitting,” she squeaks.

Only then does he seem to have realized what he just said because a blush spreads across his cheeks and Rey has to bite her lip to bite back a groan because his scent is blooming through her shop right now and if Finn’s testimony is anything to go by, it’ll probably sink into some of the yarn and she’ll be stuck with it leading up to her heat.

He turns back to his knitting, his face almost as red as the yarn, and Rey goes to help Larma with the grafting she’s working on for her sweater.

Ben’s the last person to leave the shop because he’s still doing battle with a row while the others—more seasoned—wrap their yarn around their needles to keep the stitches from slipping off and head out.

“Well?” Rey asks, coming to sit down next to him again.  He looks up at her as though surprised at being interrupted.  When he notices they are alone, he checks his watch.

“I completely lost track of time,” he says.

“It’s like that,” she smiles.  He looks a little dazed and she wonders if his blockers are starting to wear off.  She looks down at his knitting again. “You did really well.” He grimaces and runs his fingers over a few uneven patches.  “Of course you’re going to mess up on your first knitting session. It’s there to get it into your muscles. Once it’s there it’ll come as easy as breathing.”

Breathing, like the way she’s breathing him in.  He smells so damn good. She wants to rub her face against his, wants to run her fingers through his hair until he purrs.  Earlier that week, she’d thought it had been hormones. And maybe it still is. But he’s actually knitting. No. More than that.  He’d gotten caught up in knitting.

“Yeah,” he says.  “It was. I don’t know.  I can see it being calming.  Like I was getting it wrong, but I could tell that if I was getting it right it’d…” his voice trails away and he flushes again and Rey bites her lip.

“Keep practicing,” she tells him.  “You’ll be making hats and sweaters in no time.”

“You think?”  He doesn’t sound like he believes her.  

“I know it,” she tells him firmly.  So long as he sticks with it. And he might.  He’d actually come today, hadn’t he? “Come back next week,” she tells him, smiling.  “We’ll keep working at it.” 

_ It’s not desperate if you’re just offering to teach him how to knit,  _ she tells herself.  She’s said the same thing to tons of other people who’ve come to the Tuesday Knitting Circles.  It’s totally just the same as all those other times. “And if you have time, practice sometime this week.”

Ben swallows and his eyes are very serious as he nods and she actually gets the impression that he might.  He gets to his feet, tucks the needles and ball of yarn into the pocket of his coat before saying, “I didn’t pay for these.”

“On the house,” Rey says before she can stop herself.

Ben blinks at her, then gives her a tentative smile.  She gives him one back before she shoos him out of her shop with a wave.

She shuts off the light, goes out the back door and climbs the fire escape to the second floor and crawls through her bedroom window, which she has left open to the crisp fall evening.  

“How was it?” Finn asks as she passes through the living room on the way to the shower.  Rose is curled up under his arm and they’re watching a movie.

“He came.”

Finn’s eyes go bright.  “He came or he,” he waggles his eyebrows.  “ _ Came _ ?”

“I’m showering.”

“His scent off you?”

“Watch your movie!” she shouts, slamming the door and she hears Finn laugh.  

The problem is, though, for all the floral body wash that she and Rose share and the shampoo that she scrubs into her scalp are both very strong, the scent of him is lingering in her nose.   _ An Alpha for your heat,  _ her body is probably telling her.   _ Remember this one.  He will treat you well.  Him and his big hands and big shoulders and big cock. _

_ Go away,  _ she tells that thought.  She’s still got two weeks before her heat.  It shouldn’t be this strong already. It  _ wouldn’t _ be this strong already if Ben and his scent didn’t make her just want to melt all over him.

She doesn’t say anything to Finn and Rose as she goes back to her bedroom and throws herself onto her bed.  Ben’s still in her nose and she’s a little too hot and already naked so she reaches over to her bedstand to find her vibrator—the one that has a simulated knot at the end.  Usually she just uses it for surface level masturbation. It more than gets the job done of thrumming at her clit until she falls apart. But as she gets closer to her heat, and especially now that she’s got that  _ Alpha _ scent there, she skips her clit entirely and pushes it inside her all too accommodating body and turns it on.

She tries very hard not to think of Ben as she settles into the vibrations.  She tries not to think of his hands, of his lips, of how he makes her feel positively petite even though she’s taller than average.  She tries to think of nothing at all, or of some vague sexual activity with some vague partner just to satisfy the itch between her legs.  

But as she moves the vibrator in and out of her, all she can think is,  _ Ben’s knot would be bigger,  _ as the knot extension vibrates against her g-spot.   _ It would get bigger, and bigger the more he fucks me until he couldn’t pull out at all. _

A tight fit.

Her whole body jerks at the thought, her cunt clutching at the toy inside her while she pants and listens to the sound of the wind rolling through the leaves outside.  

Ben’s scent is still in her nose.

So she takes a deep breath, and doesn’t turn off the toy.


	2. K1P1 to the end of the row

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off--I love all of your reactions to this. You're making my life. For you knitters (and non-knitters who are appreciating the knitting component of this fic) out there, if you haven't checked _[purl two together](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15232011/chapters/35328483)_ I recommend remedying that as soon as you are able! It's delightful.
> 
> Secondly--So many thanks to [spacedarcy](https://spacedarcy.tumblr.com/post/176182504227/the-knotting-shop-by-shmisolo-ben-realizes-upon) and [chloisismyfairytale](http://cloisismyfairytale.tumblr.com/post/176198101901/the-knotting-shop-by-shmisolo-ben-realizes-upon) for making _wonderful_ moodboards for this fic. They're so beautiful I love them!!!!!!!
> 
> Lastly, enjoy this update my friends!

Ben tries to practice.  He really does. He’d felt oddly calm while knitting—he’d told Rey as much and he’d meant it.  All the bullshit in his head went quiet as he tried to find the rhythm of the motion of the knit stitch.  Repetitive. In and out. Like what his breathing is  _ supposed _ to do when Uncle Luke had told him to try meditating his anxiety and rage away.  That hadn’t worked. 

Knitting had, though.  

But the next time he pulls the yarn and needles out, there it is again, the scent that had been stuck in his memory is now back in his nose and in the safety of his own house, he does not feel guilty getting a hard-on and doing the only other activity that has ever made his mind go quiet.

He rubs his hand lazily up and down his cock, eyes closed, a smile pulling at his lips.  He’s not overwhelmed by it now, the way he had been that first day. There’s just enough of it in his nose to remember—

She’d smiled at him.  And had told him he was off to a good start.  She’d had a lovely laugh and nimble fingers and he groans at that last thought because she’d handled the needles so easily but he’s sure his cock would look massive in her hands, and he’s even more sure that she’d handle  _ it _ very well. 

_ You can do it,  _ she had said,  _ I believe in you. _

His knot throbs and he squeezes it as tightly as he can, as though in squeezing it he can make her feel everything she’s making him feel right now as his head spins and streaks of cum shoot up his chest to stripe his t-shirt.  

He can’t remember the last time he’d knotted while masturbating.  Probably because he hadn’t had an Omega’s scent in his nose. He feels positively euphoric as his orgasm continues, filling the room with his scent now, strong enough to wipe away most of the remnants of Rey’s.

Most of it.  He opens his eyes and—

“Shit,” he mutters to himself as his cock just keeps on doing its thing.  He’d let the knitting rest on his stomach while he’d palmed himself and it’s now covered in his cum.  Instinct makes him do something very stupid where he tries to rub the cum out of the knitting, but it seems to have the opposite effect of rubbing the cum  _ into _ the wool, mixing his scent with Rey’s in a way that almost makes his eyes roll into the back of his head.  “Shit shit shit.” He throws the knitting to the other end of the couch and glares at his cock. “Will you stop for a second?”

But no.  No it won’t stop for a second.  It’s a knotted orgasm, it’ll go for at least another twenty minutes, and even as he stares in horror at the knitting, his brain is already being flooded with those good endorphins that make sex a positive experience for humans.  

She’d told him the needles and yarn were on the house, despite the warning on the website.  She’d smiled at him and told him he’d done a good job for a beginner. She’d praised him. She’d seemed pleased that he was there.  That was good, right?

And even on his blockers, he’d thought she was cute, and fun, and nice, and pretty. It wasn’t just his dumb biological reaction to her hormones the way his current predicament is.  She was a real person. She ran a knitting store, and was patient with him as he completely botched the experience of learning. 

He groans and his orgasm intensifies for a moment as he thinks about coming  _ inside her _ , her face buried against his chest as they drown in one another, as he pulls a blanket around her to make sure she’s not cold—possibly one she’d even knit.

_ Please just let her want me. _

He feels pitiful thinking that.  Maybe he is pitiful wanting that.  Maybe she’d prefer if he took her the way that all the Alphas on Reddit are always talking about.  Should he have kissed her in that shop? 

He feels himself spiraling.  And he turns and stares at the knitting again.  He’ll have to wash it, but after he does, he’ll give it another shot.  Maybe her scent won’t be as strong in the yarn and he’ll be able to focus on it and everything—even thoughts of her—will fall away.  Because thoughts of her are clearly causing his anxiety to spiral.

_ Maybe I shouldn’t go back,  _ he thinks.   _ If she’s making the anxiety worse. _

But almost immediately every part of his brain starts rioting against the thought.  She smells like heaven. She’s got a nice smile. She seems to actually like him maybe.  She had seemed pleased that he actually wanted to learn to knit—and he actually found himself wanting to learn, independently of her.  And, oddly, he thinks she’ll like that more than she’d seemed to like him wanting to knit to begin with. Him wanting to do it for himself, rather than to impress her. It’d impress her.  He was getting himself confused

He sighs.  

No, he’s definitely going back.  He’ll block himself up again and try and talk to her this time.  Because he wants to. He want to know more about her than just the barebones understanding he has of her and the fact that he wants his dick in her yesterday.  He wants to care for her, care about her, and as sure as he is that she’d be very pleased by his ministrations in bed, he’s always gotten the impression that those Alphas on Reddit are missing some of the point of what it means to be cared for.

Probably because they weren’t used to feeling uncared for.

He groans.  No. No, he is not going down that road right now, not thinking about his parents and his childhood, and the cocktail of anger and sadness that he sometimes accidentally drinks when he’s trying to pretend it never existed.

Slowly, his dick goes limp and he gets up to change his shirt and wash his face and neck.  Then he goes back to the couch and grabs the knitting, bringing it into the kitchen and running the faucet.  He grabs dish soap and begins rubbing it into the knitting to wash away his jizz. Then he rinses the project off and leaves it on a towel to dry overnight.

To his horror the next day, the project looks—well—like some idiot had used dish soap to wash it.  The wool is still soft, but where it had been tightly—coiled? Is that the right word—the day before, it’s puffy and loose now.   The smell of her is still there, but it’s less strong than before thank god. Not, of course, that that’s going to help with much because it’s going to be very clear to her that he’d washed his knitting and she’ll probably leap to conclusions about  _ why _ he did it pretty fast.

But the idea of not going is worse than the embarrassment he already feels about having to lie about the fact that he’d washed his knitting because he’d jizzed all over it thinking of her.

 

-

 

“Do you have blockers I can use?” Rey asks Rose on Tuesday morning.  It’s been a week, and she’d spent every night of it masturbating to memories of Ben’s scent because, true to her predictions the week before, his scent had landed itself in some of the nicer cashmere that he’d been sitting near and Rey can’t think of a single way to get the scent out of the yarn without destroying it.  

“Blockers?” Rose asks, looking up from her cereal.  Finn’s already working on opening the shop downstairs, and Rey’s stomach is in knots.  “For…” Rose’s eyebrows twitch.

“In case he comes back tonight,” Rey says.  “I just—I want to know how much of it is the old—”

“You’re about to want to fuck everyone who can put a baby in you,” Rose completes the sentence with a roll of the eyes.  Rey’s not overly thrilled about some of the biological ramifications of being an Omega; Rose hates them even more than she does.  She does activism about it when she’s not doing metal work. “Let me see. The ones I have might have expired if I have any left.”

She disappears into the bedroom she and Finn have shared now for two years and Rey leans against the kitchen table and tries very hard to keep herself calm.  It won’t be  _ so _ bad if she doesn’t have blockers tonight.  It really won’t be. She’d just prefer to have them.  To make sure she wouldn’t be repulsed by him during the part of the year where she doesn’t want to jump his bones because her hormones are fucking with her head.  To see if maybe she’d—

Well it would be ridiculous to see if she’d want him.  Wanting people doesn’t make them stay. He’d have to want her.  Or else he’d go away and leave her behind like everyone else has.  Everyone except Finn.

Rose returns and hands her a bottle of gelcaps.  “They expire next year,” she says. “Take two, they last about six hours and take about thirty minutes to set in.”

“You’re my hero,” Rey tells her, and Rose shrugs.  

“I’m not using them.  Please use them to keep yourself sane.”

Rey spends all day trying not to think about whether or not Ben is going to come that night.  She reorganizes the lace weight section because it really needed it, and helps Finn sort one of the stock rooms.  She even goes so far as to do her least favorite activity—tracking the shop’s finances—just to try and keep her mind off Ben and his big hands and the way he’d actually tried knitting.

By the time six pm rolls around, the usual girls have all arrived.  

“Please,” Larma says tugging her sweater out of her purse.  “What did I do?”

Rey has no idea, but immediately sets herself to trying to help fix the issue and if it weren’t for the fact that Ben sits down right next to her when he arrives, she might not even have noticed him at all.

“Welcome back,” she hears Jess say  “Did you make any progress this week?”  

“I—tried,” Ben says, his voice low.  “I had a bit of a mishap.”

“What sort?” Jess asks.

“Got some sauce on it and tried to wash it off—” Rey hears everyone at the table inhale in unison and she glances up at Ben.  His face is bright red as he produces the knitting he’d started the week before. The bottom is a puffy mess, but he’d gotten about three rows further, though he had messed up the start of each row and accidentally added a few stitches at each go.  But his tension was good and it made for a smooth gauge, though Rey suspects that his stitches are still too tight. 

“Well,” Amilyn says, “It’s just a learning swatch.”

“Swatch?” Ben asks.

“Like a bit of fabric,” she explains.  “Something small, not part of a project.”

“Oh.”  Ben looks down at the swatch in his hands.  “Yeah, I guess.”

Rey turns back to Larma’s sweater and Amilyn helps Ben get set up with his rows and before long he’s knitting, staring at his hands with a look of pristine concentration.

Rey takes a moment to drink him in when she finishes getting Larma back on track.  

His eyes are intense and dark, his hair is thick and falls into his face, and his shoulders are hunched around his needles, but she can tell that they’re broad.  She remembers that from last week when she’d been thinking more with her cunt than anything else. His nose and lips are large, but they seem to fit his long face and it’s not a conventional handsome, perhaps, but she does think there’s something to him.  

As if he senses her watching him, he looks up from his knitting and their eyes lock for a moment and Rey’s stomach does the most horrible flip flop it’s ever done in her life because that’s not an Alpha’s  _ I’m going to fuck you until you can’t breathe  _ look that’s a terrified  _ help I don’t know what I’ve done with my knitting _ look and Rey swoops into action.  

“Why’s it doing that?” Ben asks, sounding nervous.  Rey stares at his swatch for a moment before smiling.  

“You were purling.”

“What?”

“Remember last week when I said that there are two basic stitches and everything else is just variation?”  He nods. “Well, I taught you to knit. The other stitch is purling. You were purling.”

“So that’s why it’s all smooth like that?”

“Yes,” Rey grins at him.  “Come on.” She takes his hand without thinking and pulls him to his feet towards the front of the shop where they have a bunch of sweaters on display.  “See this? How it’s making a little V?” She runs her fingers fondly over the merino wool. 

“Yeah.”

“That’s because when I was making this, I would knit one row, and then on the reverse I’d purl.  Knitting pops the bump over to face the back of the work, while purling pulls it forward. So when you knit one row and purl the return, it’ll make that smooth V on the right side, and then on the wrong side—that’s what it’s called, the wrong side—it makes it super bumpy.”  She lifts the hem of the sweater to show him.

She doesn’t think that Ben’s taking any of this in, but she wants him to know that he hasn’t fucked up—he’d lucked into some knowledge.  He stares at her, that dazed look back in his eyes.

“You made that?” he asks at last, pointing to the sweater.

Rey flushes.  “Yeah,” she says.  “I made all the displays.”  Ben’s head snaps around to stare at them—scarves and hats and shawls and sweaters hanging on hangers throughout the shop.  They have sale tags on them, but no one ever buys them because most people who come into this shop are looking to make their own items.  But still—they’re nice. Rose sometimes takes them to her arts fairs since she goes to those more frequently to sell her iron work and usually someone snaps them up there.

“You’re really good,” Ben says, then adds quickly, “I mean, I knew you were.  I could tell from the way you taught. But this is lovely.” He reaches a hand out and brushes his fingers over the wool and Rey’s heart catches in her throat.  She doesn’t know why, but him touching something she’s made—well it feels a little like he’s touching her.

“So,” he says after a moment.  “It’s good in both the back and the front.”  Then his face gets so hot that his ears go red this time and Rey chokes.  “The loop. The yarn. Inserting the—” he groans. “I’m just going to stop trying now.”

Rey is trying very hard not to laugh.  She’s trying really, very hard not to laugh.  Except that she does a little bit and when she does, Ben looks at her before laughing a bit himself.  “Sorry,” he says. “I—”

“There’s an elephant in the room,” Rey says, grinning up at him.  “Or a cat, I suppose.” She flushes and decides that pretending that they are Betas, or at least not dancing around one another’s scents isn’t working.  “I’m a domestic shorthair,” she says. “You?”

“Maine coon,” he replies.

“That explains the size,” she says and he freezes and she flushes because she’d  _ meant _ his height but given everything that had just come out of his mouth by accident he might have interpreted it very differently.

He doesn’t seem to have though.  “You know,” he says slowly, clearly thinking, “That’s probably the best explanation because my parents are both really short.”

“Are they cats?”

“My mom is,” he replies.  “My dad’s a fox. You?”

Rey gulps.  “Dunno,” she shrugs.  “Didn’t know my parents.”

“Oh,” he says quickly, “I’m—”

“It’s all right.  You didn’t know.”

They stand there awkwardly for a moment.  Then Ben asks, “You own this place?”

“Yeah,” she says.  “Me and Finn. We’ve had it for about four years now.”

“It’s a great place,” Ben says looking around.  “Homey.”

“I should hope so,” Rey replies.  “Knitting’s a homey activity. Everyone should feel like they have a home.”  Her voice gets a little thicker than she intends and Ben shoots her a look.

“You’ve made a wonderful one,” he says softly and Rey finds she can’t look away from his face, from those eyes that are staring into hers and which look as though he means every word he’s saying.  There’s something she doesn’t understand in those words, but she’s not sure she needs to. And without his scent in her nose she doesn’t even think that it’s her stupid  _ please Alpha please I’ll be so good for you just fuck me  _ hormones that make her want to reach out and take his hand.  

“Yeah,” she says and there are tears in her eyes.  “Yeah, it is.” She’d fought tooth and nail to make it, and to make it as bright and warm as she could.  And Ben sees that. He sees that more than he smells it right now.

She wants to kiss him.  She wants to kiss him, hard, to taste him since she can’t smell him right now, to rub her face against his and scent him because that’s where his glands are too, right next to his sinuses.  She wants to bring him into her home, because he’s already here and said that it was wonderful, because he sees without knowing just how hard won it is. Rey has always been cautious because her instincts have always told her to be.  Scaredy cat, she’d sometimes derided herself. But every instinct is telling her right now that she has nothing to be afraid of from Ben—except that he’ll leave. And she wants to show him how little she wants him to leave.

But there are the other knitters in the room and she steadies herself a bit.  Maybe if he’s the last person to leave again tonight, she’ll do it. Because she wants to.  And she’d be completely shocked if he didn’t too.

As luck, coincidence, or perhaps, intention would have it, Ben is the last person to leave again, staring at his knitting.

“I know I’m lurking,” he tells her as she draws the blinds down in the windows.  “I just want to finish this row.”

“Take your time,” she tells him.   _ I don’t want you to go,  _ she doesn’t think it’s quite appropriate to say.  When the shades are drawn, she comes and sits at the table next to him, watching him go.  His fingers are still getting the hang of it, and his stitches are still so tight she thinks that if he pulled too hard he’d snap the wooden needle they’re wrapped around, but he’s knit six rows and hasn’t added stitches to the last two.  

“You’re really making good progress,” she tells him when he jams the needles into the ball of yarn.

“Do you say that to all the students?” he asks her, a little sardonically.

“Yeah,” she tells him, a little sheepish.  “But I also mean it. You’re getting the hang of it.”

He stares at her and it looks as though he’s going to try to smile but it doesn’t quite work because he’s gotten lost in her eyes.  She knows the feeling. She’s gotten lost in his too.

“Ben,” she breathes and reaches out a hand towards him and a moment later he’s tugging her towards him, pulling her lips to his and kissing her, whimpering against her lips as he does so.  But before she can even settle herself into it he’s pulled away.

“Sorry,” he says at once.  “I shouldn’t have just done that.”

“No—I liked it,” Rey said, and she pulls his lips back to hers.  He has such soft lips and when he opens them under her tongue she moans because there he is again—that chocolate rainy day flavor that has her practically purring against his mouth it tastes so damn fine.  She wraps her arms around his neck—or tries to. They’re seated on chairs next to one another, and that’s not exactly conducive to this particular activity. She could straddle him, she supposes. She’s getting wet already from that taste of him, why not apply friction?  Or she could pull him up onto the table.

_ You’ve made a wonderful one. _

No, she doesn’t want this on a table.  “There’s a couch,” she murmurs to his lips, licking along them.  “At the back of the shop.”

And he picks her up as if she weighs nothing at all, and carries her bridal style through her own shop, his face bent towards hers until he settles her onto the couch.  Her legs fall open because she wants him between them, and he settles there, rubbing his face along the edges of her hairline. 

“I’m on blockers,” he tells her.  “The past two times. Because I needed to think straight.  I have trouble thinking straight sometimes.”

“Yeah?” she asks him, tilting her chin up, trying to kiss at whatever parts of his face she can reach.  

“Yeah,” he says.  “I manage to fuck things up a lot.  And I didn’t want to fuck up.”

“You didn’t,” she tells him.  “I—”  _ want this _ , but he’s stopped kissing her.  He’s hovering over her, rubbing his face against her cheek.  She turns her head to kiss him and he lets her before pulling back.  Before pulling away.

“Look,” he says slowly, breathing steadily.  “I like you a lot Rey. A lot. More than I know what to do with.”   _ So why aren’t you kissing me?  _ she doesn’t ask.  He swallows, and looks down at her nervously.  “Can we just...can we talk? Don’t get me wrong, I like where this is going.  I really like where this is going. But I want to know you. And I want you to know me.”

So Rey takes a deep breath, and sits up too and leans forward to rest her forehead against his.  

“All right,” she whispers.  “Tell me everything.”

He swallows, inhales shakily, and does.

He tells her about the job he hates, about the boss who seems out to control every aspect of his life, about his bad relationship with his family, about how he’s gotten so used to loneliness that he sometimes forget that others don’t feel that way.  In turn, she tells him about her youth on the streets, about being taught to knit by a little old woman who had died six months after giving Rey her first needles and how making things with her own two hands is sometimes the only thing that makes Rey feel as though she deserves to exist.

“That’s not true,” he tells her fiercely.  He’s facing her on the couch, and he pulls her against his chest and Rey presses her face against him.  She can’t smell him, and he can’t smell her, but the warmth of him is comforting, the weight of his arms around her.  It feels like the first time that Finn had hugged her. Except different. Different because she and Finn have never kissed, not even in those early days, because Finn’s her brother her best friend and Ben’s something else, the promise of something she had never thought she’d have because, honestly, even having Finn sometimes feels like more than she deserves.

She tells him about Finn, about learning to trust for the first time, about feeling safe and wanted because Finn came back for her when no one else ever had.  He tells her about his uncle, and losing trust in someone who is supposed to keep you safe, and how that makes it so hard to keep going because even when you try to let the past die, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t try to drag you down with it.  

They talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and Rey is tucked under his arm the way that she so often sees Rose tucked under Finn’s.  She feels safe there, warm, nurtured— _ trusted _ , which she knows is a big deal for him.  

It’s a big deal for her too.

And when her eyelids flutter shut because it’s late, he kisses the top of her head, and lets her sleep.

 

-

 

Ben wakes harder than he has ever been in his life.  Like he is seriously halfway to fully knotted. And it doesn’t take him long to figure out why.

He had fallen asleep on Rey’s couch, with Rey wedged between him and the back of the sofa, snoring lightly.  She smells incredible, so fucking incredible. This room, this shop, smells as much like her as it ever has, and Ben’s blockers had worn off while they slept.

Which means that either he has to get out of this room before Rey wakes and take the coldest shower of his life when he gets back to his house, or he is going to need to fuck her until he loses his mind because being half-knotted and fully hard at—he checks his watch—seven thirty in the morning can only end poorly.

He doesn’t think he can move without waking her, and the way she’s burrowed herself into his side, as though only wanting to be close to him...no one’s ever done that before.  Wanted to be close to him. Wanted him. 

Ben stares down at her, aware that he’s scruffy and should shave before kissing her again, aware that his breath probably smells gross, aware that his dick is pressed into her stomach, seeking warmth, seeking home.

He takes a deep breath—a deep breath of  _ Rey _ —and brushes his hand along her hair.

Quick as a cat, she is awake, pushing herself up onto her elbow, eyes taking him in, processing where they are, and why.

“Hi,” he says quietly.

“Hi,” she replies.  Then she pulls herself up so her face is hovering over his and his eyes roll into the back of his head because her scent glands are so close to him right now.  Carefully, purposefully, she rubs her face over his. Then she pulls herself out from between the sofa and Ben and straddles him and Ben’s lost, he’s just lost in the feel of her, the smell of her, the way the tip of his dick is now rubbing against the seam of her jeans right between her legs.  

“Alpha,” she whispers and he really hadn’t thought it would be possible for his dick to get harder, but it does.  She rubs her crotch against it and he breaks.

His hands are at the button and fly of her jeans, undoing them both and she leans forward as he tugs both her pants and underpants down her thighs.  She sits back up and it’s an awkward movement, getting them the rest of the way off her legs, but she handles it as well as she can and he occupies himself with his own fly and button while she does, pulling his dick out of his pants.

When Rey does sink onto him she lets out a hiss and he lets out a groan and closes his eyes, willing himself not to come just yet.  Not just yet. Please not just yet. She feels so good. She wants him.

“You ok?” he asks her.  He’s big, he knows, and she’d hissed.  He opens his eyes and sees that hers are closed too.

“Perfect,” she breathes, her chest heaving and Ben gets the impression that she’s trying hard not to come too.

But he wants her to—wants her to come on his dick, wants her to fall apart, to melt into him, to feel as good as she can, as good as she makes him feel—so he flicks a thumb across her clit and she lets out an “oh fuck,” before—good god she got tighter around him, how was that possible?  She’s squeezing him so tight, so so tight and Ben watches the way her face contorts as she lets the feeling of it all wash over her. 

Slowly, she comes back to the room, her eyes hooded, her cheeks flushed, her scent mindboggling and if he weren’t half-way knotted right now he’d be jerking his hips right up into her, trying to catch as much of that tightness around his knot as he can.  

She reaches down between them and locks eyes with him as her fingers trace over his knot.  His whole body spasms and how he keeps from coming right there he’ll never know because his whole body is drowning in her right now and she just grabbed his knot, she touched it, she held it in her hands even if it was only for a second.  

He grabs her wrist and pulls her forward, resting her hands on his shoulders and his at her waist.  Then he starts to guide her up and down, along his length and she’s sighing and it’s heaven, this, drowning in her while she sighs and comes on his dick, warm and soft and wet and welcoming and he could get used to this.  He wants to get used to this. He wants never to feel anything but this ever again. Screw work, screw every obligation he’s ever had. He’ll drop them all in a second if it means that he never loses Rey.

“Ben,” she moans, “This is—”

“Rey—”

“You feel so good—”

“I love you—”

The words tumble unbidden from his lips and her eyes fly open and for a moment he thinks it’s horror on her face until he feels her cunt tightening around him again and her hips jerk under his hands and she’s whimpering and biting her lip and coming and coming and coming and he jerks himself up into her as deep as he’ll go and lets himself stay lost this time.

She collapses forward on his chest when she’s done, her face buried in the crook of his neck over his pulse point.  He wraps his arms around her and holds her tight while his cock keeps spurting cum into her. Idly, he thinks of their conversation the night before, about her birth control, and about how, blushing, she’d masturbated thinking of him knotting her.  He wonders if it’s better than her imagination. 

She keeps rubbing her face against his neck and he kisses what part of her head he can reach.  

“Was that ok?” he asks her after a few minutes.

She peaks up at him from his neck.  “My heat starts next week,” she tells him softly and his mouth goes dry.  

“I’ll be there,” he tells her.  “If you want me.”

“I want you,” she says breathily and buries her face in his neck again.  If he weren’t still coming, he’d probably come again from just those three words.   _ I want you.   _ He trusts her to want him too.  He trusts her. He trusts her, trusts that he can lose himself in her without losing himself because she won’t let him get truly lost.  He’d meant it, he realizes, when he’d blurted those words out. He does love her.

He tightens his arms around her and rubs his face against her hair, scenting her.  He wants her to smell like him. 

She wants to smell like him.

_ She wants you.  She wants you for her heat.  Your Omega...Yours. _

“Here?” he asks.  “Or my place?”

But before she can reply, the back door of the shop opens and—

“Good god!” Finn has entered and immediately whirled around, covering his eyes with his hands.  “This is a  _ family establishment _ .”

Rey bursts out laughing and twists away from Ben’s chest to say to Finn.  “Give us a few minutes. I’ll open shop.”

“You fucking will,” Finn grouses and he slams the door shut and Ben can hear him saying—loudly enough for them to hear—“I need to bleach my eyes now.”

Rey turns back to Ben, giggling.  “Probably the only way to stop him from making fun of me,” she says.

“Making fun of you?”

“Teasing.  You know. Sibling things,” she says rolling her eyes.  “Or at least, that’s what I’ve always assumed.” Ben believes her.  Neither of them have siblings, but she’d called Finn her brother last night.  “He’s been...encouraging in a very teasing sort of way that I...should jump your bones.  So really, he only has himself to blame because he should be careful what he wishes for.”  And she’s laughing again, her nose scrunching up adorably. 

Ben sits up just enough to press a kiss to it.  Then they settle back down on the couch and wait for his knot to ease. 


	3. Continue for ten inches (or desired length)

“Four days?  On such short notice?”

“Yes.”

“And may I ask why?”  Snoke is looking at him over steepled fingers, his eyes cool and Ben decides that like fuck is he giving Snoke an answer to that one.

“Personal reasons,” he says.

“Are you trying to leave, Ben?”

Snoke’s the type of manager who, well, micromanages.  He likes to know every detail of everyone’s work, and frequently that tendency expands into personal life.  

“You should quit,” Rey had told him the night before when he’d told her about it—how it made him uncomfortable and yet made him feel oddly cared for.  “That’s controlling is what it is.”

Snoke steeples his fingers and sighs.  “I suppose you’ll just not show up if I don’t approve the vacation time.”

Ben doesn’t say anything, he just stares at his boss.  Because like hell is he letting Rey go through her heat alone, not when she’d asked him to be there with her, not when she trusted him to be there with her, not when every sense in his body screams that she is his home now.  

Snoke sighs.  “Fine. We’ll reschedule these Starkiller meetings, then.”

Ben leaves the office shaking a little bit.  He’s never put his foot down to Snoke before, and while he’s not entirely sure that taking four vacation days next week because Rey’s about to go into heat constitutes standing up to Snoke, it certainly feels like it.

It feels good.

Or at least, it does until he gets home that night and finds himself all too alone with his thoughts.   _ I’m going to get fired,  _ is the first one.   _ Snoke’s going to transfer me away from her,  _ is the next.   _ Oh god, what did I do?   _ He stares at his phone.  He is not tempted to call Snoke and say he doesn’t need the time off, but he is tempted to call and apologize.  He runs his hands through his hair.  _ Like a rabid cur on a leash,  _ he’d once heard Snoke say about Hux.  What would he say of Ben? 

He flips his phone over and goes out into the living room and picks up his knitting.  He wraps the yarn slowly around his left hand and thinks of Rey—not hard at all when the yarn smells like her.  And him. It smells the way they had that morning when they’d fucked on the sofa in the back of her shop. It smells like peace, and home as he inserts the needle into the loop, spends a few seconds trying to grab the yarn, and pulls it back through and neatly onto the right-hand needle.

In and out.  In and out. He breathes.  

He breathes and thinks of Rey and the way she’d felt as she’d come on his dick, twice, the way she’d felt stretching around him, knotted to him as she’d nuzzled into his neck.  

In and out.  His needle into her loop.  

Yeah, he understands what she means when she says his stitches are too tight.  

She’d been so tight this morning.

“Fuck I’m not doing this again,” he thinks as his dick starts to get hard.  

Except that he is.  

He throws the knitting across the couch this time, learning from past mistakes, before he unzips his pants.

 

-

 

Rey drums her fingers against the steering wheel of her car as she drives to the address that Ben had texted her after kissing her goodbye a week ago.  All her windows are down, and the temperature is hovering around freezing, but Rey’s in a tank top and shorts because late autumn doesn’t matter when your body is ready to  _ go go go. _

She hasn’t eaten in two days.  She hasn’t showered in three. Her hair is an oily mess on top of her head, but the concept of water makes her feel true to her cat genetics because she will cut a bitch if anyone tries to submerge her—much less if she tries to submerge herself.  She’s tried some of the dry shampoo she’d gotten from the drug store but it hasn’t worked too well. She doesn’t really care. She doubts that Ben will either.

Finn’s been avoiding her for the past three days.

He’s mated, and he’s her best friend, and they have an unspoken awareness that when she’s about to go into heat, they steer clear of one another.  Rose has helped in the shop, and Finn’s gone off and done whatever it is that Finn does when Rey’s too close. 

The light changes up ahead and she gets caught at the intersection and Rey lets out a hiss of frustration.  “Come on,” she mutters. Her clit is swollen in her shorts and she keeps moving her hips back and forth to try and get it to rub against the similarly swollen skin of her labia.  There’s a towel underneath her that’s starting to get a little bit damp because she’s starting to soak through her shorts. 

And that’s nothing compared the way the glands on her face are rioting right now, needing someone for her to rub against.

She glances at her phone screen.  Apparently she’s two minutes away.  She can make it two minutes before shoving her hand down her pants.  And two minutes isn’t enough time for the bad part of her heat to set in.  As if it isn’t all bad. But the part that makes her want to scream and cry because it  _ hurts _ .

That’s probably thirty minutes off.  She’ll be at Ben’s by then. Ben will hopefully be in her by then and maybe she won’t even want to scream and cry because he’ll be taking care of her.  He’ll take care of her. 

She’s always had to take care of herself.

It’s nice to know someone wants to take care of her.  Scary.

The light changes and she hits the gas a little too hard because her wheels screech against the asphalt and the screech goes right through her body as her heart jolts.

“Calm down,” she tells herself, knowing it’s futile.

Calm and heat don’t go together.

She pulls into Ben’s driveway two minutes later.  She knows it’s Ben’s driveway because he’s sitting on his own stoop, watching her arrive as though wanting to make sure she’s actually going to make it.  He’s wearing a sweater—store bought, but nice—and Rey practically falls out of her car in her urgency to get to him.

She doesn’t even say a word, she just kisses him as he gets to his feet and whines as he wraps his arms around her.  Her slick is dripping down her leg and she thinks it might be steaming slightly against the cold. Or maybe that’s just her imagination.  

What isn’t her imagination is the way he growls into her lips and half-carries half-leads her into the house.  

If she’d been worried about, well, anything, in the past week—that Ben actually didn’t like her as much as she thought he did, that he might be getting cold feet about spending four days in bed with her, that the mafia was going to kill him and hide his body—she’s not worried now as he kicks the door shut behind them and tugs at her shorts and underpants so that they pool at her ankles.  She toes off her shoes and steps out of the clothes. She’s sure they will remain there for the next four days. She rips off her tank top and presses herself against him, fully naked while his hands rove her back, while he mouths at her hair, clearly not even a little perturbed with how she hadn’t washed it. His sweater is soft. Probably some sort of blend wool that can be machine washed, but it feels nice against her tits, especially given how stiff and sensitive her nipples are right now.  

But as much as she likes the feeling of his sweater, she grabs the hem of it and tugs it up and over his head, taking his t-shirt with it before latching her lips onto his collarbone and biting down on it lightly as his hands find her ass and he picks her up and carries her into his house.

He takes her through rooms she doesn’t really pay attention to, or maybe they are hallways.  Doesn’t really matter. What matters is Ben. This whole house smells like Ben, and she feels safe.  

Safe, and hot, and she’s rubbing herself against him as he carries her because friction, she needs more friction, the only thing that puts the heat out is more heat, she’s learned that the hard way.  She whines and purrs and she’s so slick, can’t he smell how slick she is why isn’t he in her already?

She tumbles onto a bed and sits up again, wanting to pull him down to her, but he’s unbuckling his belt and dropping his pants and stepping out of them before covering her with his body, pressing down on her, pinning her to the mattress while she wriggles underneath him.  So close. So nearly there. His scent is everywhere, but she needs it in her, please, please, it’s starting to get too hot, it’s starting to hurt.

“I’ve got you.  I’ll make it stop hurting,” he whispers and she realizes that she had said the last bit out loud, that she’s fully entered that begging part of heat.

But she can’t even begin to feel bad about it—though she will in a few days when everything normalizes again—because the begging had worked and Ben’s pushing his way inside her and yes, yes yes yes, yes, just like that, please, please Alpha as he rocks into her, as he bottoms out and slams into her, as he rubs his face between her breasts, over her neck, over her face, covering her with his scent as her slick gets all over their thighs and makes the way they slap together that much more delicious.

“You smell so good,” he moans as he fucks her.  “I can’t even describe it. You smell so good. You feel so good.”

_ Good _ , she thinks.   _ Good, he thinks you feel good, this is good, he is good, he is taking care of you you’re not alone you’re not alone you’re not alone. _

She chokes out a sob when his knot starts to expand in her.  It’s not as big as it was last week—not yet—and the way she stretches around him as he pulls in and out sends tremors through her body.  “More,” she begs him. “More, please, Alpha, please, Ben, please.”

He bites down on her neck and her fingers tighten against his back and his movements get more and more shallow as his knot swells and as it swells, Rey’s whole heart swells because she’s so full, she’s so full, she’s so—

The next thing she’s really aware of is lying on his chest.  He’s pulsing cum into her still, she can feel it spurting through her cervix, and he’s kissing the top of her head, his arms around her.  She rubs her face between his pecs and squirms down, trying to push his cock deeper into her. She feels safe. And pleasantly warm. And he smells so good, smells so so good.  

It’s raining outside, drip drip dripping its way past his window onto the sill outside.

He smells like rainy days.

Drip drip drip, like the slick that’s still flowing out of her, drenching her thighs, drenching his bed, leaving a mark of her in this place that smells like him.  It smells like her now too.

He smells like her too.

She rubs her face against his chest again and one of his hands trails up and down her spine.

“How are you feeling?” he asks her.

“Good,” she replies.  Not too hot just yet but that’ll come again.  She’ll come again. She’ll come more times than she can count, she knows that.  Ben will take care of her, she can smell it on him. 

“Water?” he asks her and she looks up at him.  He is looking at the bedside table where she sees one of those giant packs of water bottles. Thirsty. Not bathing her. Making sure she hydrates. Keeping her safe. 

She sits up, wincing slightly as his knot shifts about inside her.  She’s not supposed to move when he’s knotted inside her. She is supposed to stay safe, and tucked under his chin.  But she accepts the water bottle from him and drinks it down in one go before looking around the room for a trash can.  

“Throw it anywhere,” he says. “I’ll get it later.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

He sits up underneath her, muscles—he’s got so many of them she’d barely noticed before because she’d been so lost in it—rippling  as he leans his forehead against hers then brushes his cheeks over hers. Then he licks her cheeks and kisses them, and she giggles a little bit and he grins.  

How she ends up on her hands and knees, Ben curled over her as he drives into her again and again and again, she doesn’t really care.  All she cares about is that it’s happening, that he’s got one hand on her hip, the other curled around under her stomach and he’s biting lightly into the back of her neck and groaning and mumbling how good she smells how good she feels how fuck fuck fuck he’s coming before she’s crushed onto the increasingly damp bed underneath him.

She loves the way this bed smells. She never wants to leave this bed. She wants to stay here forever, burrow herself so deep inside him that he’ll never be gone, that he’ll never leave her.

“I love you,” he tells her again when her legs are up on his shoulders and he’s rubbing three fingers over her clit while his knot pulses and her g-spot sings and she comes again because she does believe him when he says it.  She knows it’s fast, she knows she’s primed to believe it right now of all times, but she does. She does. She wants to and she does.

The rain stops at some point, but Ben keeps going.  The sun sets, and it rises, and Ben is still there. He curls around her, her holds her to his chest, he is always, always, always touching her.   _ Not alone,  _ his touch tells her, even when she’s a little too hot to be comfortable, even when she’s writhing, and whining and worried that maybe this time it won’t be enough and the fires will catch her skin again and no matter how much cum Ben fills her with it won’t be quite enough to douse the flames and she’ll burn burn burn.

He licks at her face, kisses her neck, holds her heart between his hands and when Rey sleeps, she sleeps knowing he won’t leave her in the middle of the night.

 

-

 

She purrs in her sleep.  At first he thinks it’s snoring.  He’s heard her snoring, after all.  She had snored lightly in the shop last week.  Had it only been a week ago? He feels like he’s lived a lifetime in this bed with her.  He feels like he was born again the moment he pushed his way into her. How had she let him do that?  How readily her body accepts him. How readily her heart.

She purrs on his chest, though, vibrations in her throat when he runs fingers through her hair or along her spine.  She’s so dazed he doesn’t think she’s even aware she’s doing it. Just little contented hums that he’s there with her as she buries her face in his chest and lets exhaustion win for a little while before the heat starts to rip through her again.

Ben can’t let go of her.  He’s a bit peckish, but he can’t let go of her, he won’t let go of her.  The concept of leaving this bed is laughable. Not when he feels happy—true, unadulterated happiness—holding her while she purrs in her sleep on his chest.

 

-

 

Rey decides the way she likes it—him—them best is when their eyes are locked.  She doesn’t really care what position he’s got her in, whether she’s straddling him while he toys with her breasts; whether he’s fucking her into the mattress—which positively squelches now it’s so full of their fluids.  (“I’m going to have to get a new one,” Ben jokes during one of their more lucid moments when he has her tucked under his chin. “Though it won’t smell as good…”); whether he’s fucking her from behind, her head twisted so she can catch a glimpse of his face as his balls slap deliciously against her clit with every thrust.

She likes it best when she can see his eyes.  And she likes it best when he’s looking at her when he says, “I love you,” which he does about once an hour.  “I love you,” when he’s approaching an orgasm that will flood her with cum and keep her heat at bay for however long; “I love you,” when he’s rubbing his fingers through her hair, making her purr contentedly because it just feels so good, having someone rubbing her hair, the skin behind her ears; “I love you,” when he kisses her lingeringly as he’s trying to get out of bed because she might not be hungry, the idea of food might be repulsive to her right now, but his stomach is starting to growl and even the euphoria that comes from orgasm after orgasm after orgasm can’t quite match the need for food.  (When he gets back, he takes her so hard, so intensely, that she almost forgets how to breathe, forgets that there’s a universe beyond this bed because of the way that Ben’s filling her and holding her and licking her face and coming for long, hot minutes until she’s too full of him to hold anymore and his cum starts leaking out past his knot to saturate his already ruined bed.)

She likes it best when she can see his eyes because when she’s looking him in the eye, she knows that it’s the truth.  Not that she thought he’d lie to her, not that she even thinks he’s remotely close to a liar—but rather she can’t avoid the truth, can’t trick herself into a dangerous  _ he won’t want you after your heat.   _ When he looks at her, and tells her he loves her, and knots her, it’s the heaviness of the truth of it that makes her come, quite as much as the physical sensation.

He seems to know just what she needs, and just what she wants.  Maybe she tells him, babbling and begging as she does, her glands throbbing on her face, in her armpits, at the top of her uterus.  But mostly he just seems to know. Maybe because he can read her mind when he locks eyes with her.

He has such beautiful eyes.  They’re so soft, especially when he’s smiling at her.  He does smile at her—a lot, especially when she’s coming down from an orgasm and he’s filling her with his seed.  He plays little games—mostly with himself—stealing kisses from her while she’s satiated and purring in his arms, his face lighting up like a little boy’s with delight when she nips at his lips or tongue or nose or cheeks or whatever she can reach.  Silly little intimacies that she’s never experienced during heat.

“I love you too,” she mumbles to him, she thinks on the third day?  She’s not sure. Time isn’t something that she keeps track of during heat.  Heat only has four times: beginning, too hot, just warm enough, and over, with the middle two repeating as long as the pattern goes on.  With Ben, there’s more  _ just warm enough _ than she’s had in any other heat.  Maybe because he loves her. Or maybe because he’s just right for her.

His head jerks up and his breath catches when she tells him.  She has never once said it in reply to him, nor has she ever made any indication that his assertions were unwelcome.  This, she can see in those beautiful deep eyes of his, this he knows is organic. This, he knows, comes from her. It is not a  _ please Alpha tell me how much you like me, _ it is a  _ Ben, I love you. _

He’s still coming inside her.  They’d finished only a little bit ago, and Rey is starting to feel bloated from how much cum he’s pumped into her—a biological reaction, her uterus swelling to take more semen, making it look like the early stages of pregnancy for a few days while her system rights itself again.  There’ll be no baby from this, though. She’s been on birth control for years, has never thought she’d want a baby, except during heats when all she wants is for Ben to give her one. She wonders if that sensation will linger, now that he’s part of her life. Now that he loves her, and she loves him.

His fingers curl around her clit and he starts to rub her and she lets out an almost embarrassing moan because she can feel her body producing more slick the second he touches her and she tilts her head up, wanting to kiss him.  

His torso is long.  Too long, really. Perfect for being knotted to him and tucked under his chin, but uncomfortable for kissing him while knotted to him and while his fingers are toying with her clit.

She whines, and he understands, pulling them both up to a sitting position.  There. That’s better.

She loves his lips—how soft they are, how full they are when they slant over hers and his tongue sweeps into her mouth.  She loves the way his tongue tastes. She loves the way his tongue feels when it’s twined with hers, when it’s suckling at her breasts.  Heat isn’t a time for oral sex—pretty much the only time that oral feels like a waste of time is during heat, when even a skilled tongue can’t quench the burning the way a cock can—but she knows she will love his tongue when her heat is over and he brings it between her legs for the first time.  She can’t wait to taste his knot, to drink him dry as he comes for minutes on end in her mouth and she groans at the thought of it and leans her forehead against his, breathing hard as his thumb circles her clit.

“I love you,” he whispers in her ear, his other arm wrapped around her middle.  “I love loving you. I love you loving me.”

“Yes,” she manages as her breath catches in her lungs, as her stomach trembles, as the pressure builds.  “Ben, I—” 

She doesn’t finish the thought, though, because she’s biting down on his shoulder and squeezing his cock as tightly as she can as the orgasm flows through her.  It is not overpowering. It is a  _ just warm enough _ orgasm, not needy, not needed.  She feels like she’s floating a little bit, like her body is light enough to rise off the ground if Ben weren’t locked inside her keeping her steady.  She’s purring again, and he’s purring too, and she sucks on his neck because it’s there and he rubs his cheek against hers, mixing their scents together once again.

Her lips find his, and his tongue traces along them and Rey lets herself melt against him.

 

-

 

Her heat ends.  It was always going to.  

Her stomach gurgles hungrily and she moans and sits up.  

“I have eggs,” he says at once and she nods.  He leads her into the kitchen and she’s stunned by how the rest of his house smells.  Just like him. No her. Just him. Only a few days and she’d forgotten what he’d smelled like without her.  

He fries her three eggs, with cheese and spinach, and pours her a huge glass of water.  She downs all of them very quickly as he watches her.

“Will you shower with me?” she asks him, almost shyly.  She doesn’t want his scent gone from her, but her hair is gross.  Like, really gross.

He joins her, and Rey’s had sex in a shower before, but both of them are too fucking tired from, well, fucking for that now, so they mostly just stand under the hot water, holding one another until the water gets cold.

“What are you doing this weekend?” Rey asks.  She wants to sound casual, she really does. It’s Friday, and she’d just eaten up his week.  But she doesn’t want to leave. Doesn’t want him to leave. Wants to spend time with him when they’re not blissed out on hormones and need.

“Nothing,” he says.

“Do you want to come over?” she says.  “Your bed’s probably…” too wet to sleep on properly, she doesn’t say, because his lips quirk in a knowing smile and she grins up at him.  “We can watch movies, and knit, and cuddle.” She wants to cuddle him. She wants to curl up in his lap and purr her way to sleep, safe and cared for in his embrace. 

“Yeah,” he says. “That sounds wonderful.”

Rey finds her shorts and tank top exactly where they’d been discarded several days before, then goes hunting in Ben’s dresser for a sweater because she’s  _ not _ running hot right now and there’s frost on the ground.  Ben’s waiting for her by the door, holding his knitting. He’s made some progress on it before her heat and she pauses, looking at it.

It takes her a moment to realize what she’s smelling faintly before she jerks her head up to look at him.  She’d been on blockers after he’d washed it, but like hell does she not recognize the scent of it now, after what they’d just been doing for days on end.

“Got sauce on it,” she teases, and he goes as red as the yarn he’s holding.  She stands on her tiptoes and kisses him.


	4. Cast Off and Weave In Ends

“You’re making good progress on that,” Larma says cheerfully to him as he pulls the scarf he’s making out of his bag.  He has a bag now. A knitting bag. With multiple sets of needles.

He smiles at her.  “Feels a bit dumb, finishing it right as spring’s getting here,” he replies.

“But it’ll be ready for you when fall hits again,” Jess tells him.  “I always do my winter knitting in the summer and my summer knitting in the winter.  Helps the seasons go faster.” Jess has returned to the Tuesday Night Knitting Circles, her infant in a carseat with her.  Ben had been on such strong blockers the first few times he’d met her that he hadn’t even picked up on the fact that she was an Omega until she’d come back with the kid.  The kid, who likes to chomp on spare wool because, as Ben is learning, babies apparently like putting things in their mouths.

“Summer knitting?”

“Shawls and stuff.  Mostly for offices because they’re so damn cold with the air conditioning blasting all the time.”  The comment solicits several murmured words of agreement.

Ben turns back to his scarf.  It’s for his dad, he decided. The colors don’t quite work the way he would want to wear them himself, but he can see his dad wearing it.  His dad has been making comments about home-knit things ever since he’d sent his mom one of the sweaters that Rey had knit for her birthday.  His mom loves the sweater, and can’t wait to meet Rey. 

Ben’s nervous about that.  He’s trying not to be. Things have changed in the past six months—mostly for the better.  He’d quit his job, he has a girlfriend who he loves very much, and for the first time in his life he has something he can do when he’s feeling out of control or angry or depressed.  

Sometimes  he gets weird looks on the bus on his way to his new job.  An Alpha?  _ Knitting?   _ But Ben doesn’t give a shit and no one actually says anything.  He just works his fingers and watches as whatever he’s working on grows, and grows, and grows, until it’s done, and he’s made it.  He’s made two pairs of socks, one for him and one for Rey, which she wears constantly even though the more comfortable he gets with knitting, the more he can see spots where he’d fucked up along the way.  She doesn’t care, though. She’d gone so soft and quiet when he’d presented them to her, cried into his chest for a few minutes while he hugged her, and then given him the best blowjob of his life, sucking on his knot until he couldn’t breath while wearing nothing but her new, home-knit socks.

He glances over at Rey.  She’s teaching a newcomer how to purl, and the two of them are talking very intently.  But she senses his gaze and looks up and gives him a smile, and a wink.

He smiles back.

He helps her close up when the knitting circle ends, and they go up the fire escape to the apartment she shares with Finn and Rose.  Finn and Rose are not there this week—visiting Rose’s sister down south—which means it’s just the two of them, and Ben is tempted to suggest having sex somewhere in the common area of the apartment, but Rey’s already leading him into the bedroom with a swing of her hips, dropping her knitting bag by the bed and tugging her sweater and shirt up over her head.

A thing he likes about being in a relationship with Rey: when she wants to have sex (and she frequently wants to have sex) she doesn’t beat around the bush.  She strips down before Ben’s even unbuckled his pants and settles on the bed to wait for him.

When the last of his clothes are gone, he clambers up onto her mattress—which is much more resilient when it comes to liquid damage than his own had been—and settles his face between her thighs, inhaling deeply.  

He doesn’t need blockers anymore when he’s in her shop—mostly because when he catches her scent down there, he knows that it won’t be long until he’s here with his face planted between her thighs, drinking the scent into him until Rey’s writhing under his tongue.  She moans as he licks along her slit and her hands find that spot in his hair behind his ears that he likes and she begins to rub. Ben purrs and she bucks her hips towards his tongue. 

He can taste how happy she is, how content.  He can taste his future in her slick, and doesn’t even feel nervous thinking about that because he’d told her about it one night when she’d been winding skeins into balls for about three hours and Ben had played with them when she was done, rolling them around the floor of her apartment until she’d told him to cut it out because they’d get dusty.  “This feels right,” he had told her, looking up at her from the floor. “You and me. It feels right.” He’d felt very brave saying it. He knows that Alphas are supposed to have a firm hand in the relationship, but Ben’s anxiety had never made him feel as though he has a firm hand.

Except when he’s knitting, or when Rey’s on her back, his tongue’s on her clit, and he’s curling two fingers inside her and she’s started babbling, “Ben, fuck—ahh—Alpha—I—”

He grins into her skin, sucks her clit between his lips, twirls his tongue around it and strokes his fingers along her g-spot and he knows that it’s because Finn and Rose aren’t in the apartment that she cries out as loudly as she does as she comes.

She’s still clenching as he pushes his cock into her, and she sighs, opens her eyes and lifts her head to rub her face against his as he begins to drive into her, as fast as he wants.  Her legs wrap around his hips, her arms around his torso, and she’s holding onto him as tightly as she can, pulling him deeper into her and warmth overtakes him as he presses sloppy kisses to her forehead and her cheeks and her neck and her lips.  He kisses every part of her he can reach, and her hands come down to grip his ass and she murmurs, “Harder,” in his ear and his knot starts to swell.

He’ll give her harder.  He’ll give her anything she wants.  He’ll give her everything—she can have it, take it, whatever she wants.  He’s already hers, after all.

When he’s come, and made her come again, he pulls her onto his chest the way he always does after they’re done, ready to hold her until they fall asleep.

But Rey sits up and leans over the edge of the bed and for a second he thinks she’s going to try and get off him and he grabs her hips because that will hurt her, his knot is really big right now.  But she doesn’t get off him. She sits back up after a moment, her knitting in hand and she smiles down at him, not even looking at the project in her hands as they begin to work the needles. 

He blinks at her.

“Really?” he asks.

“I’m almost done,” she says.  “I was going to finish tonight but Alandra had a lot of questions.”  Then, in response to his gaze, she adds a little defensively, “Nesting is important.”

He supposes that’s true.  He supposes that’s part of what he’s always loved about Rey’s shop—that it is her nest, this safe, soft little home she’s built for herself.  He takes it as a sign of strength in their relationship that she feels like nesting while he’s pulsing a knot inside her.

He reaches a hand up and runs his fingers over the dark grey wool.  It’s very soft. She’s been working on this sweater for a long time.  “Is this your last sleeve?” he asks her.

“Yes.  Thank god.  Sleeves are the  _ worst _ .”  She’s said it at least once a day for the past week.  Always the same complaint: you think they’ll take less time than the body of the sweater but no, they’re just as big as the front and back, only they break your heart more.

“Glad to help you get through it,” Ben jokes, lifting his hips under her slightly and watching as her eyes roll into the back of her head.

“You’re a great motivator,” she says when her gaze settles on his again.  Then a flush creeps across her cheeks. “Besides,” she tells him, almost shyly.  “It’s for you.”

**Author's Note:**

> @kiwibumblebee is a treasure [tumblr](https://shmisolo.tumblr.com/post/179124058037/hell-give-her-harder-hell-give-her-anything%0Awho%20commissioned%20this%20art</a>%20from%20@lilithsaur%20of%20my%20fic%20I'm%20floored.%0A%0AHope%20you%20enjoyed!%20%20Come%20say%20hi%20on%20<a%20href=)


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